a, desiring to investigate the origins of ancient religions,
and reported what he had seen in colourless but exact description.
In _Les Ruines, ou Meditations sur les Revolutions des Empires_, he
recalls the past like "an Arab Ossian," monotonous and grandiose,
and expounds the history of humanity with cold and superficial
analysis clothed in a pomp of words. His faith in human progress,
founded on nature, reason, and justice, sustained Volney during the
rise and fall of the Girondin party.

A higher and nobler spirit, who perished in the Revolution, but ceased
not till his last moment to hope and labour for the good of men, was
J.-A.-N. de Caritat, Marquis de CONDORCET (1743-94). Illustrious in
mathematical science, he was interested by Turgot in political
economy, and took a part in the polemics of theology. While lying
concealed from the emissaries of Robespierre he wrote his _Esquisse
d'un Tableau Historique des Progres de l'Esprit Humain_. It is a
philosophy of the past, and almost a hymn in honour of human
perfectibility. The man-statue of Condillac, receiving, retaining,
distinguishing, and combining sensations, has gradually developed,
through nine successive epochs, from that of the hunter and fisher
to the citizen of 1789, who comprehends the physical universe with
Newton, human nature with Locke and Condillac, and society with Turgot
and Rousseau. In the vision of the future, with its progress in
knowledge and in morals, its individual and social improvement, its
lessening inequalities between nations and classes, the philosopher
finds his consolation for all the calamities of the present age.
Condorcet died in prison, poisoned, it is believed, by his own hand.

The economists, or, as Dupont de Nemours named them, the physiocrats,
formed a not unimportant wing of the philosophic phalanx, now in
harmony with the Encyclopaedic party, now in hostility. The sense
of the misery of France was present to many minds in the opening of
the century, and with the death of Louis XIV. came illusive hopes
of amelioration. The Abbe de Saint-Pierre (1658-1743), filled with
ardent zeal for human happiness, condemned the government of the
departed Grand Monarch, and dreamed of a perpetual peace; among his
dreams arose projects for the improvement of society which were
justified by time. Boisguillebert, and Vauban, marshal of France and
military engineer, were no visionary spirits; they pleaded for a
serious consideration of t